How A Hard Disk Can Affect Windows Xp Performance.

As your PC gets older and older and a person install more programs and data your personal machine gets progressively slower along with slower. One reason could possibly be because your hard disk is becoming a lot more active. This hard disk action may be in many cases, unnecessary, often being attributable to programs and the system causing windows drive thrashing. I will explain to you how to determine where this activity is happening and who is triggering it.

Most people believe hard disk corruption or loss of disk space is the chief cause of most product performance problems, but disk time and activity is simply as much a performance point. Disk time is a percentage of time that the disk drive is in use. If the hard hard disk drive is running at 80 percent of times, you can be sure PC performance being infected.



One other thing to take into account is the average hard disk drive queue length. This refers to the volume of processes that are waiting to implement the hard disk. When using the disk time percentage as well as the disk queue length will inform you how much the disk drive is being used and in addition if heavy usage is causing a condition. If for example the particular disk time is managing at 40 percent as well as average disk queue time-span is two or reduced, then your hard disk is checking up on the requests for admittance.

If the percentage connected with disk time is above 80 percent as well as the average disk queue length is a couple of, it means that everyone PC processes are watching for the hard disk to turn into available. If a process must wait for any element of become available you should experience a drop in performance of one's PC.

To determine in case you have a windows hard cd thrashing problem, you must measure the percentage of disk time as well as average disk queue period.

Before you start this procedure you should perform the complete disk defragmentation on your complete hard disk partitions. It will ensure that all this files are contiguous thinking that the hard disk is able to do optimum reads and writes with the files.

After you have done the defragmentation run the actual Performance Monitor utility when you go to

Start > Control -panel > Administrative Tools then Performance.

When the Performance Monitor opens there could possibly be some monitor counters currently running, (shown at bottom part right), click on each subsequently and then delete to eradicate them. As each counter uses some resources it's best to have as few running as you can to make the proportions more accurate.

In the Performance Monitor window perform these:
* Click the + tattoo to open the Increase Counters box.
* Click the Performance Object dropdown list and select PhysicalDisk. This will bring up an index of physical disk counters.
* Pick the %Disk Time counter from your list and click all the All Instances button. This will ensure the system will measure the performance epidermis hard drives.
* Click the Add button to add the counter for the Monitor.
* Select Avg. Disk Queue Length on the counter list, and once more the All Instances control key. Click the Add button then a Close button. The performance monitor will begin analyzing the hard drive usage.

Looking at that monitor results, you can see the fact that lines shown on the graph correspond to the counters which you have selected. The pink line would be the average disk queue length for your drives C: and N: which are in this approach case partitions on storage device Zero. A more accurate value can be acquired by selecting the counter that you would like to see in even more detail.

So how don't you track down the process that is certainly using all the cd resources? The first thing you should do is bring up any Windows Task Manager. You can apply this by pressing :

[Ctrl][Alt][Delete]

on your keyboard holding each down subsequently. The Windows task manager tells you the utilization of resources that each one the processes running with the system use.

Windows task manager typically has some monitor tables selected as standard but disk usage most likely are not one of the your boyfriend. You can select which counter you intend to see as follows:
* Click the "Processes" tab at the top part. This will show an index of processes that are running on your computer.
* Click on "View" in the menu at the summit then on the "Select Columns".
* From the window that comes right up deselect everything then decide "I/O Read bytes" as well as "I/O Write Bytes" consequently "OK"

You should now check out see if from any of the counters against the processes are changing within a rapid rate. The counters should primarily change occasionally or certainly not. If you see the one that is constantly changing, then that the process stands out as the one that is hogging an individual's PC's disk resources.

To kill an activity that is hogging some sort of resource, right click around the process and then select "End Process" with the menu that appears.

If the particular process is a component of the Windows XP os in this handset, there's a good chance the high disk usage is the result of thrashing. High disk usage is usually caused by "swapping and also thrashing"

When the system actions memory blocks between bodily and virtual memory (normally called Paging) that is swapping. This is a typical process in Windows XP. Virtual memory is space suited for hard disk and because extra memory. This is done any time another process requires "Real" memory and there is not enough empty space in real memory that will put it. In this case the system will put a process which can be in real memory to the paging file on disk to build the space.

Windows drive thrashing is caused by means of high real physical as well as virtual memory swapping. This is one reason why it's advocated that as much true memory be installed on your computer as possible.

However, should the disk usage is traced with a non-Windows process, then you could have problems with an unique service/program.

If you eliminate a procedure you feel is inducing excessive disk usage, processor time and memory are likewise affected.

You can now see tips on how to track and identify software or process that could be causing excessive disk occasion usage and how it degrades the machine. Using the Performance Screen to measure both cd time and average line length, you can see in case the hard disk is being excessively utilised by the system's processes. Using the Widows Task Manager it is possible to further determine which process which can be causing the problem.